


The Sad, Dark Ones and Jewels

by WhyDoesEverythingHappenSoMuch



Category: The Goldfinch (2019), The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Genre: Ear Piercings, M/M, Mutual Pining, Underage Drinking, Vauge sex, underage lots of things because its them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-23
Updated: 2019-09-23
Packaged: 2020-10-26 11:42:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20741654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhyDoesEverythingHappenSoMuch/pseuds/WhyDoesEverythingHappenSoMuch
Summary: “Nothing, I said it was a stupid idea.” I tried to pull my hand away again, but he was holding me firmly in place by my wrist alone.“Beautiful, really potter. Why not save them for some pretty girl, like the ones at school. The sad, dark ones always like very much jewels and gifts.”“You know I don’t talk to them.”“Who.”“Girls.”Theo gives Boris his mother's earrings, Boris is grateful.





	The Sad, Dark Ones and Jewels

**Author's Note:**

> I always thought Boris would appreciate them more.

“They were my moms.” I shrug and hold out a trembling hand toward Boris. He cocks his head at me in that way he does, yet he doesn’t respond for a moment. The little emeralds have a dull yet instant glint and make themselves known as the brightest things in the room. The grime of my hands has rubbed off on them after a few nights of handling them and thinking of my mother, yet they still managed to catch what weaning light there was in the cramped room.

  
He moves his hand up, and I think he’s going to take them and my heart seizes in a funny way and a heat climbs up the back of my neck. I am suddenly thankful for the dark blanket of night and awful lighting of Boris’ room. Instead, he merely brings his boney white hand up to comb back the delinquent coils of dark hair out of his black eyes again.

  
“Potter, you can’t be asking me to sell these!” He looks aghast, and his large stunned eyes move from my hand to my face again. He is searching for something in my eyes, but I’m not sure what. I glanced down at the alcohol stained rug beneath my worn and sand-dirties shoes.

  
“No, no. I’m not- It’s just a gift. I’d be pretty upset if you did sell them.” I thrust my hand forward again.  
All I could think about as he stared hard at me was how since I had found them in Xandra’s room, I had wanted for someone worthy to own them. Worthy wasn’t I dramatic, yet that was the truth of it. I knew that I, the one who caused my mothers death in the first place, was hardly any better than the strip mall-worker-maybe-also-drug-dealer who had stolen them in the first place.

  
“Gift?” Boris’ voice was slow and careful and deliberate as he spoke the word. He seemed unsure of what to do next. We stood there for a long moment. My hand occupying the still space between us. He shifted from foot to foot, and couldn’t stop touching his hair. I withdrew my hand. The glint and glow I cherish a few moments ago now felt gaudy. My face heated, and an almost queasy feeling washed over me. A prickling sensation behind my cheeks began, and no matter how many times I brushed a hand casually across them, I couldn’t seem to wipe the feeling away.

  
Of course, Boris didn’t want my girly, mommy issue earrings. I avoided his gaze, looking over his various Russia-fanatic posters as if I had never seen them before.

  
“Sorry that was stupid.” I shoved the hand that held the little green jewels back into my pocket, “forget it.”  
Before I had opened the hand holding the earrings to let them slide into my pocket, Boris was pulling at my wrist. He yanked my hand back, and pried my fingers open; the strength of his thin wrists always surprised me. With chewed-short nails, he poked at the things, turning them over.

  
“They are very pretty, Potter. But why do you give them to me? They are your mothers.” His always expressive eyebrows furrowed as he bent over slightly and brought his alcohol flushed face closer to my hand.

  
“Nothing, I said it was a stupid idea.” I tried to pull my hand away again, but he was holding me firmly in place by my wrist alone.

  
“Beautiful, really Potter. Why not save them for some pretty girl, like the ones at school. The sad, dark ones always like very much jewels and gifts.”

  
“You know I don’t talk to them.”

  
“Who.”

  
“Girls.”

We fell silent again. Boris practically had his nose in my palm. I could feel the erratic nature of his breathing against my skin-- a familiar feeling.

  
“Maybe one day you meet a very nice girl, and you think ‘curse Boris, who has the earrings.’” He moved back now and raised a fist in a terribly acted dumbshow of my imagined future ire.

“Do you want them or not.”

“I do.”

I finally managed to pull my hand free, and I shoved it into Boris’ jacket pocket and deposited the earrings there. He grabbed my hand again and brought to his lips the palm of it, which was bloody and scratched from having held the earrings so tight.

Dark, dark eyes met mine again and for a flicker of a moment such a depth of sincerity and… longing and yearning and everything I could ever hope to see in someone’s eyes was there. The next second it was gone, and I was left mildly stunned, and wholly confused. Boris brushed passed me, allegedly on his way to get us each a beer.

____

Warm with drink, a tangle of blankets, and limbs, I listened intently to the sound of his breathing behind me. He wasn’t asleep, and he wasn’t as drunk as he claimed to be and yet he was exploring the expanse of my chest with lazy, dragging touches. Some bird maybe miles away got to calling out in the night, and Boris was turning me to face him.

Ash and smoke and astringent alcohol and somehow, by some miracle, sugar. He was in this as sharp and demanding and reckless as he was in all things. I thought nothing of it as we fell into each other for the umpteenth time.  


That bird kept on calling and calling for something; I was sure it was lonely. I was convinced that if I pushed the needy boy away that I would see that bird on the window sill, watching and envious of what was, in that moment, mine. Against my thigh, Boris was falling into the thrilling yet endless human rocking rhythm. A pace familiar to me, yet every time so new. And then he was over me, pale as death or Diana in her favorite light. At the ends of his midnight curls clung glistening stars of perspiration. I wanted to count the dots of light upon him and make constellations.

Everything coiling and quickening, and “potter, potter, potter” as it was almost every night. It was always worth every second of awkwardness that would come the next day when I found my release, it comes in waves. Wave after wave of it, and I’m gasping in the deluge, and then sleep swallows us whole again.

____

“Fucking hell!” The sound rang out in the dark of the room. I jolted up, freezing in the night air of the desert -- Boris and I had left the windows open. I was alone in bed. My blood congealed in my veins, physically weighing down my whole body as I turned my head frantically.

  
I jumped up and embarrassed and flustered by my own nakedness, angrily pulled on the nearest pair of trousers. Again, I heard Boris’ shout. My feet were leaden and heavy, yet I pushed forward. All I could think of was his father and the deep, heady purple bruise that had bloomed under his eye and stayed for weeks before wilting in lurid yellows.

  
The sound came from the bathroom, I threw my shoulder into the door without thinking. If his father was there, I knew I was as good as dead, yet somehow that hardly mattered to me. The light of the bathroom was harsh and momentarily blinded me. When I was able to open my eyes again, I found Boris in front of the mirror, looking back at me in shock.

  
He held an apple -- the first time I had seen fruit in the house-- under his ear, and the other hand a needle.

  
“What the fuck are you doing, Boris?” My whole body unclenched, and relief washed over me as my blood warmed once again.

  
He didn’t speak but glanced down at my reflection in the mirror, and a familiar devilish grin played over his face, “You wear my boxers.”

  
“Shut the fuck up, what are you doing? You scared me to death, Boris. The fuck are you using that apple for?”

He opened his mouth as if to speak, closed it again, set the needle down, took a bite of the apple, then looked back at me. He was doing his own Boris-y version of puppy dog eyes.  


“Piercing my ears.”

“Why would you-” and then I saw he had the earrings on the sink counter, little drops of blood spotted the counter around them. “For me?” was all I could think. The gesture was so grand yet so minimal and personal. I was half in love with him, I think, as I watched him wipe the bloody needle off on his grey shirt.  
A laugh bubbled up inside me, and once I started, it was hard to stop. I whacked Boris on the head lightly, and he hit me back.

“You absolute fucking idiot.”

“I am only trying to make surprise for you.” He rolled his eyes and began forcing the earring into his still bloody earlobes. He winced as he forced them in, and even this was lovely to me.

“Yes? You like?”

“You look great, yeah.”

Boris standing there, half-dressed, still buzzed, lips still kissed red -- red as the bloody apple he was experimentally biting into, wearing my mother’s earrings, was beautiful.

**Author's Note:**

> Wow! People enjoy this! Come cry about Boris with me on my Tumblr Somethingmissingthings!


End file.
